


Rough

by Ladybmorebelle



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Dating, F/F, Gay Rights, Historical, Love, M/M, Musicals, Sappy as hell, Time Travel, atomwave
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-04-05 14:28:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14046255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladybmorebelle/pseuds/Ladybmorebelle
Summary: Dating through time: two men who don't know how to say, I love you.





	Rough

The first time Mick kidnapped Ray, he hit him over the head, carried him to the jumpship, and gently buckled him in - rough hands turned tender.

Ray woke up as Mick passed over a paper bag of popcorn. The theatre smelled like tobacco and tar from unfiltered cigarettes, powdery perfume, pomade, and as the lights dimmed the beginning notes of “Singin’ in the Rain” made Ray’s eyes widen. He turned to Mick, either to yell at him for the bruise on the back of his head or to kiss his stubbled cheek, but Mick was staring intently at the screen, ignoring him, as usual. 

It was their first real date, and it started a trend. 

Mick didn’t know, really, how to be soft - how to make romantic gestures. When Ray brought him a bundle of roses, eyes warm with affection, he put them in a vase without water and watched them die. Ray was always cheerful, impossibly happy and naive, and Mick didn’t know how to do that; he didn’t know what it meant, to be in love. So he was all elbows, nudging Ray to the point of injury, running into him in the corridors of the Waverider and kissing him, hard, without words. He was fierce in battle, always protecting the man he refused to call, “boyfriend,” but he was utterly clueless in moments without violence. So he didn’t talk - he didn’t know the words - and if he felt more than simple lust he pretended the vulnerability didn’t exist. 

But somewhere in the middle of Ray’s favorite movie musical, Mick reached out and held Ray’s hand. It hurt, a little, but Ray’s heart flared like the sun, and he knew, in all of his youthful enthusiasm, that he was loved. After the film, they sat in a diner, crowded into a red leather booth, and they knocked their knees and didn’t talk all that much and ate cheese sandwiches and then made it back to the jumpship just in time to tear their clothes off. Suit jackets and thin ties and dashing hats and high waisted trousers and them, together, naked in the time stream, and they didn’t have to say the words. It was enough.

The first time Ray kidnapped Mick, he took him to the library of Alexandria. He’d blasted him, just a tiny bit, with the Atom suit - the only defeat Mick would have accepted - and tucked his glasses in his heavy jacket. Mick came back to consciousness in the quiet, cool air, redolent with the scent of parchment and spice, and Ray told him he could pick any book he wanted. 

No one else knew how much he loved to read. No one had bothered to ask. 

They didn’t make it back to the jumpship, that time. Mick held Ray, tight, demanding, and they made love in a dark corner, under a statue of Erato, the muse of love poetry. They heard the whispers of scholars, scrolls unfurling in dedicated study, and the trilling song of Ibis. In the aftermath, sweat cooled on their brows like a benediction, and Mick thought about saying something - something he didn’t understand, something he’d never even thought before - and maybe Ray could sense the tension in his shoulders but he kissed him and smiled. A little older, now, and compassionate. Mick growled, low in his chest. In that moment, sweet like honey and spring wine, they were enough. 

On and on, kidnappings, kisses, and Mick sat silently while Ray debated physics with Stephen Hawking, and Ray watched Mick’s enthralled face while Chicago burned, and no one asked where they were going, or when. 

Wally, with his stunning speed, observed them in rare moments of spiritual contemplation, and whatever training he had pursued as a monk slowed him enough to enjoy the long, stretching silences between two people inexorably linked. They were like a poem - they were like a prayer.

Zari rolled her eyes, a lot, when Mick bumped into Ray with supposed roughness, but she couldn’t help but smile, a half quirk of her red lips, when Ray looked up with startled passion. 

Boys.

And Sara - their captain - she was proud. She had forged this team, and when she curled up with Ava in her blue cotton sheets, she thought maybe, maybe, she had created something more. Something stronger - a partnership which would not break. Ava laughed, her alto voice warm like maple syrup and butter. 

There were no limits, here, in the time stream. Love was love. It was everything that Sara had ever wanted. 

And so those silent dates continued, and eventually they didn’t have to knock each other out. They didn’t talk about it - of course not - but Ray would deliver a box of clothes, tied in ribbon, to Mick’s bunk, and Mick would fabricate a black rose boutonniere with a razor sharp pin, and they kept their secrets until they arrived in whatever time they had chosen.

They dressed, Ray straightening Mick’s tie, Mick piercing Ray’s lapel with the onyx pin, and it was perfect and careful and a little rough, the tie too tight, the pin too sharp, and it was elbows and wrists and angles and two men who didn’t say the words. 

It was their twelfth date when they arrived, in 1967, at 249 West 44th Street in Manhattan. Ray chose the time, the place, and as they entered the Majestic Theatre Mick was dazzled by the golden lights and the velvet seats, and he felt too big, too rough and wild, and for a moment Ray saw the whites of his eyes like a spooked horse. He placed a hand on his upper arm, fast but firm, and thought, trust me. They took their seats in the orchestra section; the lights dimmed and the overture began.

“You remembered.” Mick’s voice was gruff, but there was tenderness, there.

“Of course I did.”

The team had hidden surprised grins when Mick mentioned how much he loved “Fiddler on the Roof.” And now, here, with Ray, he watched the original cast, and if he could have, he would have cried. 

After, Ray was quiet, and for once Mick was the one who wanted to talk - the music had opened him, a crack in the dam, and he was a little crazy with it. He hailed a cab and told the driver to go to 51 Christopher Street, the only place in 1967 where the two of them could dance. 

“What’s wrong, Haircut?”

The back of the cab was warm, soft, and it smelled like a thousand perfumes, a thousand stolen kisses. 

“Just thinking. About time. About -” he looked at the cabbie’s face in the rear view mirror, then lowered his voice, “About what we’re supposed to do, as heroes.”

Mick grunted with the particular inflection which meant, go on.

“We’re supposed to fix time - to make it work the way it’s supposed to. But sometimes I wish -”

Ray’s body was tense, tight, somehow hollowed in over itself, and Mick laid his hand on the seat between them, just the side of his finger brushing Ray’s leg, unable to hold hands, turned on and turned up like static on the radio. 

In 1967, that was tantalizing, and seductive, and it was sad.

How did people live like this?

“We see so many bad things, and we know we can’t change them. Like, like the show.”

“Didn’t have to come here.”

Ray placed his hand on the side of his thigh, his fingers close to Mick’s.

“I wanted to. But there’s so much evil in the past. The temptation to fix it…”

Another grunt from Mick.

“I wonder how many more relatives I would have, if we could change the 20th century. If we could make it right.”

They were silent, because whatever Mick wanted to say - they were just words he didn’t know. 

The cold lights of Manhattan blurred in the cab’s windows, and a soft rain fell, drops of water streaming down the windows, fighting against gravity. Their hands finally touched, hidden from the driver on the dark leather seats, and Mick willed all those words he couldn’t say into the skin of his fingers like a hot pulse of flame.

The taxi pulled up at the Stonewall Inn. Ray took out his wallet and handed over the cash he had fabricated back on the ship. The fine rain misted in his black hair, and when they went through the door, Mick did exactly what he wanted to do, and ran his fingers over Ray’s scalp. 

Firm, rough, pulling, kneading, pleading - 

Be here with me. Be happy.

Ray ordered drinks - a dirty martini, a glass of bourbon - and they sat at the bar, drinking. Mick thought that it would be a lot easier to get drunk than to fix whatever had broken in Ray, and then he took three sips of his bourbon and pushed it away. He breathed, heavy, and watched bodies dancing, burdened souls set free. 

He grabbed Ray’s hand, and for once, it was gentle. 

“I know that time is working itself out. Chronos, right? I’ve seen that things do get better, over time. Here -” he nodded towards the dance floor, “This place, there’s going to be violence, and then the world is going to change. Not perfect. But better.”

“And then -”

“And then the world makes us. Makes me, a fuckup, and you, a genius. And somehow that turns out right.”

Ray looked down at his hand, long fingers intertwined with the thick callouses of Mick’s. 

Music pulsed around them, and the room smelled like Mick because it was full of smoke and sex. 

“We are right.”

“Yeah. We are.”

A little spark of teasing flared in Ray’s eyes.

“You could say we’re meant to be. You know, like an epic romance.”

Mick grimaced.

“I don’t do romance.”

Ray laughed - not hurt in the slightest - and took one more sip of his martini.

“But do you dance?”

He stood up and held out his hand. 

Mick looked at this man - this man from now, and from Ancient Egypt, and from 1952, and 1871, and every damn day throughout time and space - and he didn’t know what he could say to do justice to how he felt, which was like the world on fire. His black hair was damp, and his smile was crooked, and he was too tall and too skinny, and he was the only thing that Mick had ever really loved. 

“I guess I do.”

When they danced, it wasn’t rough at all.

**Author's Note:**

> If you were on the Waverider, when would you go? I've been thinking about how two clueless men would find romance throughout time. All I seem to be able to write is sappy stuff. Plus! Musical theatre is clearly the path to these guys' hearts.


End file.
